Born in the 40s. Stoned in the 60s. Bored in the 90s. Dazed in the tenties.

I'm not a grumpy old man, just an out of synch hippy

Saturday, 30 June 2012

Hey diddly dee

Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Another commercial audition on Wednesday. This time it was
for milk. I was up for the part of, wait for it, a milkman. It’s nice to know
the old trades aren’t disappearing, at least not in adland. And good news, I
got a recall. It must have been my delivery.

It was my first milkman. I’ve played vicars, mad scientists,
monks, dyspeptic men (Rennies), school janitors and Spanish magicians. I’ve
been up for farmers, postmen, flute players, referees, shop assistants,
sneezing men, coughing men and the chemists who give them prescriptions. But
I’ve never been considered for Romeo or King Lear, and although I spend a lot
of time muttering to myself, I’ve never been called to play Hamlet. Mind you,
how well would Hamlet do in a commercial casting?

That’s the great thing about acting. My eyesight’s probably
too dodgy to retrain as a surgeon, my reflexes too creaky to step in as an
airline pilot, but I can still do the necessaries in a commercial
audition.That is, give your name and
agent to the camera, (OK, that can be tricky after a couple of pints the night
before), and turn both ways to give your profiles. I’m not boasting when I say
that the gracefulness and speed of my turns are Olympic class.

And in a hundred years’ time, even though they may be
filming onto omega rays transmitted directly to the underside of peoples’ eyelids,
acting will still be the same. People will play people. And if the part is
someone like me, then you’re not going to ask George Clooney or Ben Whishaw,
you’re going to use me.

So let’s get into practice. How many pints do we want today,
Mrs Jones?

Except they almost certainly won’t be using milkmen in a
hundred years.

Sunday, 24 June 2012

Don’t ask me nothin’
about nothin’, I might even give you the truth

Market Research questionnaires - the end of the world as we know it...

Cold showers at the swimming pool today again. It was built
five years ago and, for most of that time, showering’s been like being sprayed
by hailstones. Then, as I was leaving, a woman waved a questionnaire under my
nose. Just to add to the misery.

“We value your opinions,” she said. “It’ll only take three
minutes.” “That means ten,” I grumped. “Noooooo,”
she purred, being careful not to say what she really meant: “You stupid old bastard.”
I was about so say “So you don’t value my opinions, then,” when I remembered
the showers. Here was my chance to air my voice. “OK then,” I muttered.

I was manhandled into a chair as she thrust some A4 sheets and
a pen into my hands. The paper was covered with 8 point type from edge to edge.
One blink and I was already in need of an aspirin. I turned the page over, afraid.
The worst happened. It was double-sided.

I was invited to give my thoughts on the toilets, the
courtesy of the staff, the efficiency of the staff, the cleanliness of the
foyer, the cleanliness of the poolside area, the ease of use, the quality of
the food, the value for money of the food, the value for money of the pool, the
courtesy of the food, the value for money of the courtesy, the edibility of the
equipment, the supervisor’s tattoos, the inpenetrability of the attendants rap
slang...

…all on a scale of one to five, where one means ecstatically
brilliant and five means incitement to murder.

And on the second
sheet, I was invited to mark the importance to me of all the above on a scale
of one to five where one means…. I think you’ve got the picture.

Five days later I got to the end. There was not one question
on the showers. “My main comment,” I told my inquisitor, “is that the showers
are freezing and have been for five years.”

“That’s terrible” she purred.

“But that’s the only point I want to make,” I grunted, “the
rest is bullshit.”

“Sorry,” she said, arranging her face into the sympathetic
look policeman are trained to give when they have to tell someone their dog’s
been run over, “it’s not on the questionnaire.”

Thursday, 21 June 2012

In
PC World no one can hear you scream

I bought a new monitor today. It’s lying on my bed still
in the box. I only fit new hardware early in the day: I’m terrified of clicking
a wrong button or something and putting all of London’s lights out.

As soon as I get into PC World, though, my
technophobia turns into slavering. It’s a bit like a puritan stumbling across a
very raunchy porn site. Like most men, gleaming black surfaces and glowing
moving images bring out something deep within me. Maybe it’s some kind of prehistoric
DNA memory of spotting the shiny tusks of mammoths striding through the tundra.
I spend minutes drooling over and caressing smooth rectangular objects whose
function is beyond me.

I’m pathetically eager not to seem a technoprat to
the young assistants. This makes me ask questions which must make them think
I’ve escaped from an institute for the semi-criminally insane. Pointing to a prospective
monitor I found myself blabbering stuff like “How many RAM does it have?” or “Does
it have a Blu Ray port?” when what I really want to ask is “Is that thing the
On Switch?”

I’ve been trying to restrain myself from loading up
with irresistible gadgets ever since I came home with what I thought was a tablet
but was in fact a photo frame. I try to restrict impulse buys to the cheap
stuff. I’ve a drawer full of mouse mats, two or three unused laptop bags and loads
of books on Linux. I haven’t a clue what a Linux is, what it looks like or even
whether I’ve got one. If you can advise, could you let me know?

I’m not giving out my email, though. If there’s a
power cut across London tomorrow, I don’t want you getting on to me.

Sunday, 17 June 2012

Pina Bausch. Great choreographer, but you try getting a drink out of her.

Maybe it’s
my age. Maybe it’s the general crapness of things. But I’m increasingly turning
from Polyanna to Rosa Klebs faster than a poisoned blade springing from a
toecap.

Last night I
went with my wife to see Pina Bausch. Not her personally – she’d dead – but her
dance company. I’m not really a ballet kind of guy. Women wearing tutus should
be put to work cleaning chimneys. People who inflict jetes and plies on the
public should be whacked with an ASBO. But Pina appeals to the old hippy in me.
Her choreography is wacky: her dancers go into twitchy spasms a bit like me at
Glastonbury in 1973 except they’re on the beat. And they don’t wear tutus.

But I went
straight from laidback flower child to Disgusted of Tonbridge Wells when the
barman said he wasn’t sure I couldn’t preorder an interval drink. “I’ve never heard anything like it. What’s the
world coming to? If you think I’m sitting through three hours of dance without a
drink then ….”

He made a phone
call to the manager, okayed the order and we were pals.

Next the
girl at the doors tried to charge me £8 for a programme. “If you think I’m
paying £8 for a programme you’ve got another think coming. Who do you think…”

“It’s for
the whole season” she stammered.

“But I don’t
want to see the whole season, I just want this show. How the hell am I supposed
to know what’s happening without a programme?”

Actually in a
Pina Bausch show nothing really happens, unless you count a woman punching a
talking pillow, a waltzing couple twining toy snakes round their heads and bits
of white paper falling down as stuff actually happening.

Other things
which make me spit venom: people who put their feet up on train seats; people
who end simple affirmative sentences with “yeah?”; people in front of you in the
supermarket queue who hold you up as they dash back for forgotten items; people
who text during performances…

The woman in
front was fiddling with her glowing phone as the lights dimmed. I was getting
ready to go into Rosa mode. Then she turned it off and settled back to watch
the show. Inconsiderate bloody bitch.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

If
you don’t want a heart attack then stop jumping up and down

I was talking the other day to my
friend James. He mentioned he was taking statin pills for his
cholesterol.“I’ve got to bring down my
count,” he said. “It’s 5.3. Doctor’s orders.” “Aren’t they supposed to make you feel woozy?”
I said. “Yes, but it’s better than keeling over at the bus stop.” “Serve you
right for running “ I quipped but he’d gone on to talking about his heart rate
and there was no stopping him.

I was building up a joke along
the lines that bringing down the count sounds more like a job for garlic and a
crucifix when something else occurred to me.

“I heard you can’t drink with
statins.”

“Ah hah!” said James, tapping his
nose, “If you’re planning a drink, you just don’t take the statin”

Plan a drink? I imagined my To
Do list. “Phone agent. Start work on accounts. Sink triple Jamiesons.”
Actually, that’s the way it really happens, especially after doing my accounts.
But though I may be thinking of the triple Jamiesons all afternoon, when I
actually drink it, it’s spontaneous.

I mentioned James’s conversation
with another pal, Dermot. I expected warm approval of my point of view, but Dermot
said, statin-wise, “I’m on them too. My count’s 5.8. I’m lucky I’m still here,
basically.”

Men of our generation never
talked much about football. At one time we went on about sex (after all, we
invented it) but that’s dropped off the conversation radar. These days, to get
a man over 55 really going, ask him about his health. Cholesterol counts have
taken the place of global warming as top bogie topic. We wait in dread for it
to go over a certain level; a bit like the arctic seas.

I blame doctors. We’re healthier
and need them less, and they’re sick as parrots. Revenge? Easy. Stop their red
meat. Cut back their cheese. Ban their drink. Stuff them full of statins.

Friday, 1 June 2012

Nothing beats a good
twiddle

Whatever happened to knobs?
Time was, if you wanted to turn up the telly, you’d amble
over to the friendly box in the corner, fiddle with the dial and hey presto,
you could hear what Bob Harris was saying. Ditto with the oven timer, though
even technomoron me knew this wasn’t the best way to tune into “The Old Grey
Whistle Test”.

But these days I have to fiddle with pointy sticks, glowing
lights, tiny and icons the size of pinheads. Knobs are solid. Turn one, you get more of
something. Turn it the other way, you get less. That’s something I can
understand. But press a remote button, you get a glow which leads to a beep which
lights a screen which shows a notice saying “System error please refer to your
service provider, whoever that is, not to us, because we haven’t a clue what’s
gone wrong and frankly don’t give a f***”.

Last night it was warm in the comedy class I teach. I
started to open the window. “Try the aircon” said an American student. “We
haven’t got any” I replied. She gave me a look which said “Next you’ll be
saying you don’t have running water” and pointed to the door.

Beside it was a small flat thing about the size of my brain
after a couple of pints of ESB. For four weeks I hadn’t noticed it. It wasn’t
something I could relate to in any way. It wasn’t a knob.

I said “Yeah, yeah” and strolled over to it with a casual
gait which I hoped signified that all this was tediously elementary. The thing
consisted of a display of lights and a row of buttons with icons of some type.
I’d have been better off trying to decode the Rosetta Stone.

After about ten minutes of my silent struggle Ms America
came over and pressed something or other. With a “whoosh!” the room went from
sauna to icebox. “Wheey” she whooped and returned to her chair. Her look now
said “Now you dare criticise my homework.”

Half an hour after the class finished I finally succeeded in
turning the thing off. I don’t know how I did it. The forecast is for things to
get a lot cooler. Frankly, I’m relieved.

About Me

My name's Tony and I'm a writer....
I've written sketches and one-liners for TV and Radio for the UK and all over Europe. I write magazine articles, I teach comedy writing and standup comedy, I write material for performers and presenters, I'm pretty good at cooking Thai food and I don't have a cat.
Oh, and my book "How To Write Comedy" will be published in April 2014.